The Amazon is the focus of the 2007 Fraternity Campaign

BRASILIA, Brasil, February 21, 2007

During the 2007 Fraternity Campaign, the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB in Portuguese) Taxi Heathrow Airport will be discussing polemical matters concerning the Amazon, such as the encroaching by frontier agriculture on the flora and the presence of foreigners in the region. The campaign officially began today, February 21, Ash Wednesday.

When speaking to the press on Friday, February 19 about the Fraternity Campaign, the President of the CNBB, Cardinal Geraldo Majilla Agnelo said that the Brazilian government needs to discuss new ways for the economic exploration of the region. “There is an exploitation driven by profit, private benefit,” he said, which can be very profitable for the temporary inhabitants, for the country itself, “but it leaves whole communities outside of those benefits,” Cardinal Majilla Agnelo argued.

The Fraternity Campaign for the Amazon “could help us to establish new kinds of relationships with nature around us. The unchecked exploration of the environment without concern for the consequences, can lead us toward self-destruction,” emphasized the Metropolitan Archbishop of Belen, Orani João Tempesta.

Tempesta recalled the report on global warming recently made public by scientists, pointing out that humans are capable of destroying the only known place where they can physically live. Because of that, affirmed Tempesta, “in this time when we need to convert (the time of Lent), we also need to relearn with the Amazon and the Amazonians to live in harmony with the environment and do penitence for the wrongs we have already caused.”

The theme of the 2007 Campaign is “Fraternity and the Amazon,” and its motto, “Life and Mission on this Soil.”